Greece’s burning platform, if the country was software

It is with great sadness that i watch the news about Greece’s financial turmoil and all the trouble this little country of nearly 11 million people causes to the rest of the financially interconnected world. It is striking that not even Greeks themselves are willing to agree to commonly address this situation. Greece is standing on a burning platform.

What is really surprising though is that the architects of this platform along with their opponents are the ones who claim they can fix the problem right away, by changing only a single variable in the system: the leading party or the current government.

Nokia was standing on a burning platform, according to newly appointed CEO, Stephen Elop. The new leader announced the death of Symbian and MeeGo while declaring Windows Phone as the primary platform for new high end smartphones. At the same time, R&D costs went down, departments were phased out and new tools were brought in to support the new ecosystem and attract developers for the Windows Phone SDK. It was a bold move but the mothership announced a plan and executed parts of it with first results available in just 8 months: the new Nokia Lumia 800 and Nokia Lumia 710.

Nokia as a public company decided, for better or for worse markets and history will judge, to change a hell lot of things. There is a new management team with a new strategy, new developer tools and new developers to build and support the ecosystem to be built upon, until then, a hostile platform, Windows Phone.

Greece is standing on a burning platform but unlike the Finns, Greek people (shareholders) choose to stick with the current management team and their opponents (government and other parties), believe on a failing OS (culture), use legacy tools (lawmakers) and legacy SDKs (journalists) to satisfy current market needs with UI changes and bug fixes while completely ignoring market trends and developer needs (investors). Legacy tools and legacy SDKs only support an ecosystem until it collapses under its own weight or is forcibly phased out..

Greece, your platform is burning.